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Shimmering dream pop. Spacey fuzzdrones from the
future. Noisy walls of sound with 3 dimensional astral
projection. Autolux lives somewhere between
non-conventional means and outer space. But they also
seem to have a distant love of the pop song format,
to keep an appreciation on some level for accessibility.
So just what kind of band are they? A diverse one.
They weave through a variety of genres - indie rock,
shoegazer, dream pop, noise, and sometimes jangly
off-kilter kind of stuff.

So what you say? Lots of people mix genres these
days and why should you care? Because it's the age
of context and with Autolux it's how they
put it together that's cool.

They deftly weave their way in and out of these genres
and go back and forth between them. They have noise
and loops between their songs. Off-kilter chords get
played along side agreeable ones. It's complicated.
It's like My Bloody Valentine joined with Sonic Youth
to give you dream pop leanings.

Every new song brings a fresh combination. I keep
waiting for the music to get played out, but it keeps
getting more interesting with each listen. These are
guys are passing what I call my Sonic Youth
test - meaning that if the songs grow better over
time with repeated listenings without becoming stale-
then they are a deep and complex band.

But wait, theres more. Autolux does it with
a distant appreciation for the pop format, so as deep
and complex as the music is, there is still a certain
out-of-the-box approachability about it.

I haven't even talked about any of the songs yet.
So much for the Spacelab quick consumption
format of short attention span writing. Bear with
me.

So how did these get so revolutionary? The seem to
understand how to abandon the past to forge into the
future, based on right now. Yet the music seems timeless.
They could have released this 10 years ago and been
very successful with it. And yet they are doing well
today with their recent Coachella appearance
and all.

So on to the songs. It's all about the songs. The
opener Turnstile Blues is slow and melancholy
in its outset, but it keeps trying to build up energy.
There's a mild blues overcover to it but it's mostly
dream pop with some noise. It plays on with a determined
plodding-on sense to it, with trippy noise coming
in once in a while. They leave you wanting more, very
saavy.

The stuff between the songs is as interesting as
the songs themselves. Sometimes spacey Wonder bread
loops of sound are mixed with the soundtrack like
the ice cream man's song as he drives through your
neighborhood. Sometimes it's just noise.

The serious rocking out begins towards the end of
Sugarless. I'm experiencing a wall of sound
kind of caucophony (maybe it's the volume of the song,
but that's all part of it) as they start to rock out
on a groove. It's noisy and chaotic, but again it's
accessible in a good way. Maybe that's the defining
notion of Autolux, they are great at bringing
the fringe together with accessibility.

This energy continues into Blanket, and down
to Robots In The Garden, a 1:50 workout that
ends up as rocking as Nirvana was. And then comes
the big single - Here Comes Everybody. This
is a great mix of the Autolux everything. It's
got all of the best parts of the band in one song.
Noise, pop, a little rocking out, and that every-present
spaciness.

So check them out. Buy their album, go see them when
they play live near you. Do not pass Go, do not collect
$200. Do it now.